Institute for Data Ecosystem Advancement

Building the infrastructure public data deserves.

IDEA advances the science and practice of integrated data systems. Our efforts include developing standards, conducting research, and equipping communities for improved data sharing.

What We Do

The field needs research,
standards, and practice.

Most communities building integrated data systems face the same structural problems. IDEA exists to identify and share the structural solutions to those problems.

01

Research & Measurement

We develop diagnostic frameworks for measuring governance burden, data product value, and structural readiness across integrated data systems grounded in operational community evidence.

02

Field Standards

We produce practitioner standards for IDS design, governance architecture, and inter-IDS information exchange developed cross-site and published openly for use across the national network.

03

Education & Deployment

We build practitioner capacity through workshops, training, and community education centered on the safe and rapid application of research into the communities deploying public good infrastructure.

Current Work

Active research
and field initiatives.

IDEA's current portfolio spans governance diagnostics, privacy-enhancing technologies, and the first cross-site interoperability standards for integrated data ecosystems.

Standards
Inter-IDS Interoperability Framework
A cross-site standards alignment across three institutional layers — local, county, and state — producing a replicable readiness package for any IDS assessing capacity for inter-IDS information exchange. Developed in partnership with academic partners, regional, state, and local government.
In Development
Research
Governance Saturation in Integrated Data Systems
An exploratory diagnostic study identifying how governance burden can be measured from routine operational artifacts before it manifests as project failure. Applies a two-dimensional model of governance adequacy, distinguishing structural resolution from functional capacity.
Under Review
Theory
Structured Incompleteness Theory
A theoretical framework explaining why coordination across institutions is structurally constrained and why mismatch is a design problem rather than a failure of will or competence. Underpins IDEA's applied diagnostic work and governance standards development.
Working Paper

The Diagnostic Argument

Why data partnerships stall.

"Persistent governance delay may signal structural mismatch."

Across nine IDS projects and thirty governance episodes, stalled authorizations occur only in custodial architecture, and at coupling loads below those handled under federated design. The difference between a project that delivers in 87 days and one that takes 624 is not trust, leadership, or staffing. It is the structural resolution of the governance boundary.

IDEA's research makes this diagnosable from artifacts every organization already produces.

Structural Resolution
The range of request types that a governance boundary can distinguish and route appropriately.
Discrete and combinatorial. Altered through governance design, boundary decomposition, domain-specific review, or architectural choices. No amount of staffing compensates for a boundary that conflates structurally distinct request types.
Functional Capacity
The rate at which a governance boundary processes and authorizes requests it already recognizes.
Continuous and temporal. Improved through staffing, expertise, templates, and facilitation. Necessary but insufficient when structural resolution is the binding constraint.
The Coarsening Cascade
What happens when capacity pressure leads to conflation.
Capacity pressure leads to coarsening of request types, which leads to conflation, which produces misrouted governance — friction attributed to relationships when the underlying problem is structural. IDEA's diagnostic framework identifies this pattern early.

About IDEA

IDEA is a research and field-building collaborative established to advance the science and practice of data-driven community improvement.

Our work spans applied research, practitioner standards development, and community education with particular focus on the governance and technical infrastructure that allows agencies, nonprofits, and governments to share data in ways that are lawful, purposeful, and equitable. We publish openly and develop standards collaboratively.

Nonprofit
The IDEA Fund is a charitable component Fund of Tulsa Community Foundation. All contributions to the IDEA Fund are tax-deductible to the extent provided by law (EIN #73-1554470).
Focus Areas
Governance Architecture · Privacy-Enhancing Technologies · IDS Standards · Applied Research · Systems Theory

Work with us to
build the field.

IDEA welcomes collaboration with researchers, practitioners, foundations, and government partners working to advance integrated data systems in the public interest.

Get in Touch View Our Research